How to Cope with Overwhelm and Busyness: 5 Key insights

If you find yourself wishing that everything could just stop, even for just one day so you can draw a breath…

If you would like to not have to keep all those plates spinning…

If you want things to be different to being ‘on the go’ every day and then collapsing into the numbness of screen time…

The chances are that you are experiencing overwhelm.

When the demands placed on our attention exceed our capacity to mentally process them, the symptoms of overwhelm begin to show up.

Just like stress, overwhelm is experienced differently from person to person. In some it can cause a foggy slowness, and difficulty in concentrating and remembering. It can make it feel impossible to come up with the answers we need to get past our roadblocks and challenges.

In some people, it can lead to an exhausting overdrive, where thoughts race, minds won’t switch off and it feels impossible to slow down or stop.

We sometimes hammer away at our problems but somehow the right solutions evade us.

However it manifests, it feels pretty awful, it can damage our health and relationships and prevent us from enjoying what there is to enjoy in life.

Actively dealing with overwhelm and busyness and having the tools to tackle it is important.

A lot of our coaching clients come to us with that feeling of struggling to keep their head above the water as they meet each day’s demands, and although everyone’s situation is different, there are some key strategies that we see making a real difference to the people we work with, when they put them into place.

Become a time ninja:

When we know the difference between what is important and what is urgent, we enable ourselves to actively protect our time from outside demands (which often feels uncomfortable to begin with).

We can spend more of our energy on the things that truly matter by becoming skilled at reducing and avoiding many of the demands that zap our energy.

You can read more about the specific tools that we recommend our clients use in our blog on Freeing Up More Time.

Use the here and now as a centring device:

There’s a James Joyce quote whose advice we do well to follow when dealing with overwhelm and busyness:

“Hold to the here, the now. The moment through which all future plunges to the past.”

Part of the experience of overwhelm is that we feel like a leaf being blown around in the wind, our compass in a spin. We lose our sense of being grounded, stable and in the driver’s seat.

There’s a very simple technique taken from the school of Gestalt Psychotherapy, that even when applied for just two minutes allows you to drop back down into your centre, clears your head and brings some calm.

You can do it sitting, standing, walking, lying down, anywhere.

All you have to do is inwardly say “I notice…” and let your spontaneous perception fill in the gap, and then you repeat this again and again.

Each time something different will present itself to your imagination and your senses.

For example, as I sit here writing, I notice the seagulls squawking outside, I notice the hum of the fridge, I notice discomfort in my left hip, I notice I am breathing through my mouth, I notice the shadow of my hand as it moves across the keyboard, I notice the taste of coffee in my mouth… etc. etc.

What this exercise allows us to do is to quickly enter a state of non-directed attention.

This is when our attention is not seeking anything out, but instead being fully open and receptive to whatever presents itself to us through our spontaneous flow of experience.

Being in a state of non-directed attention gives us some space to cognitively recover from the strain of being in a state of directed attention for so much of the day, where we are actively attending to many different task-oriented stimuli and constantly switching and directing our attention from one thing to another.

Directed attention burns a lot of brain glucose and sooner or later, the tank runs dry.

Limit your information intake:

It is no coincidence that the epidemic of overwhelm sweeping through our lives coincides with the information overload unleashed by smartphone use.

Scrolling news stories and social media feeds feels like it is taking time out, but at a neuro level it is activating us, instead of relaxing us; it burns up our brain glucose as it involves so much attention switching.

Setting boundaries for our media consumption is the best defence.

Designate specific times of day to catch up on news or social media, and to get around that magnetic desire to constantly check, unsubscribe to non-essential newsletters, logout of all your accounts, do an app cull, switch off notifications and turn off and put away your phone so it is not within you range of sight.

Research - known as the brain drain hypothesis - has shown that even when a smartphone is switched off, if it is somewhere you can see it, it still drains away some of your attention.

Start practising non-screen activities for time out, like reading books or going for a walk with some music on. This method of dealing with overwhelm and busyness is the one that our clients tend to experience the biggest positive impact from, as it allows their minds to rest.

Think like a marathon runner:

Many of us deal with overwhelm by front-loading as much work as we can.

Getting everything done yesterday, priding ourselves on our lightning response times can create the illusion of control when in fact, no matter how much we do this, the in-tray will never be empty.

Speeding up just increases the speed at which new tasks come in, and speeding up also prevents us from noticing all the little opportunities that each day presents us with to just enjoy the simple pleasure of existence.

We are left feeling competent and accomplished at the end of each day, but with a nagging feeling of dissatisfaction, of not feeling quite fulfilled.

So take your foot off the gas, even just a little bit, and notice the difference it makes.

Let some things go:

Letting go of some commitments or reducing the time you spend on them might feel like a wrench or it might feel like you're letting others down, but you have to prioritise your health in order to be there for others at all.

Having a cold hard look at your current commitments and their alignment with your priorities is the place to start.

Which commitments really contribute to your personal and professional growth, or to the relationships that matter the most?

Saying yes to those things means saying no to others, so practice saying "no" when new commitments don't align, and reduce the time that you spend on unimportant things.

And as a rough guide, anything that doesn’t truly help you find meaning, enjoyment or a sense of achievement in life is an unimportant thing.

Recognise that letting go doesn't equate to failure; it's a strategic choice to channel your energy where it matters most. Embrace the idea that by minimising and releasing certain commitments, you are effectively dealing with overwhelm and busyness and you are creating space for growth, new opportunities, and happier life.

In making these changes, remember to ‘single task’.

Try one strategy at a time and space them out so that you can really fine-tune your approach, learn from any missteps or set-backs and understand which strategy works best for you.

Give each one a couple of weeks, not a couple of days, to give it a chance to take effect.

When we are in a state of overwhelm, it has often been building up over weeks and months so it won’t vanish in just a couple of days with all the strategies in the world.

Track your progress, reward it and be patient with yourself as you discover that dealing with overwhelm and busyness is something that is within your power to do.

Let us know how you get on!